King Charles and Camilla Shun Palace for Country House After Coronation

King Charles III and Queen Camilla left the crowds at Buckingham Palace to spend the night at their countryside retreat in the west of England.

The royal couple's police convoy was seen passing through Tetbury, less than two miles from his Highgrove Estate, hours after the ceremony.

Footage posted shortly after 6 pm on May 6 to Facebook showed a maroon Bentley passing through the town less than four hours after Charles and Camilla watched a Royal Air Force (RAF) fly past in their crowns from the balcony of Buckingham Palace.

Highgrove House is a key location in Charles and Camilla's relationship during the period when he was still married to Princess Diana as the now Queen Consort lived nearby.

Camilla used to host dinners there for his friends while Diana was away and such was their secrecy that staff would circle shows in the Radio Times listing magazine so that when the princess arrived it looked like Charles had been in front of the television rather than seeing his mistress, according to the biography Diana: Her True Story.

However, it has also been a rural haven for Charles and a place where he could pursue farming and gardening.

Before it was purchased by the Duchy of Cornwall, an estate he has now passed on to Prince William, he told his private secretary in 1982: "It would be so much more fun if the Duchy would purchase a nice house with a small farm, having sold somewhere less useful, in Cornwall, for instance, where I could learn some practical farming for a start—as well as being my own master."

Alexandra O'Brien, the owner of Bay Gallery Home, posted a photo on Twitter and wrote: "That's King Charles & Camilla swinging through our town, Tetbury, heading back to Highgrove after a hard day spending £250m to get crowns and their heads and eat cucumber sandwiches."

She told Newsweek her son saw Charles and Camilla pass by, though she also expressed some reservations about the coronation: "A few months ago they asked us if we wanted to be known as the royal town of Tetbury. There is affection here for him, definitely, a lot of people in the town have worked for him and he's not a bad fellow by all accounts.

"Juxtaposed with what's happening in the U.K. and the fact he's already been a King for nine months it's really galling for a lot of people.

"You could see the collusion between the state and the monarchy in the status quo and I think a lot of people also felt that."

She said the approximately £250 million [$315 million] spent on the coronation would have been better spent on foodbanks.

O'Brien runs a gallery of Aboriginal artwork and some of her artists have danced for Charles.

She added: "I'm not a rampant anti-monarchist but they have suffered at the hands of the Brits from the beginning. I think that needs to be acknowledged that they have had a major hand in obliterating the oldest race in the world."

Jack Royston is chief royal correspondent for Newsweek, based in London. You can find him on Twitter at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.

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